In 1935, a fellow by the name of Roy Stryker went to work for the federal government. Specifically, he took over the job of managing the Historical Section of Roosevelt's Resettlement Administration. Almost immediately the organization morphed into the Farm Security Administration, and his section became the Information Division.

Without putting too fine a point on it, Stryker's job was propaganda - to give the Administration what they needed to justify spending money that they didn't have. To further this aim, he came up with an idea: he'd send out a bunch of photographers to make pictures that would both tug at America’s heartstrings and provide support for Roosevelt's policies. He gathered a bunch of talented people from varied backgrounds - writers, painters, and budding photographers - and sent them over the country to make pictures.

While we can certainly debate the means of the program, the ends were spectacular. Stryker's team shot over 164,000 pictures, producing hundreds of iconic images and launching the careers of many talented photographers. So good was the group that they would later be transferred to the Office of War Information to document the country’s entry into World War II, though their tenure would last only a year.

Of those hundreds of thousands of images they shot, only 644 were in color. Color film was quite expensive, even for the government's pockets, but more importantly couldn't be reproduced in the newspapers of the day. Its use was therefore quite limited, and the photos somewhat rare.

Here are 70 of those 644, including some from a couple of my favorite FSA photographers: Jack Delano and Alfred Palmer.

(What happened to Stryker? In 1943 he went to work for Standard Oil, who foresaw the need to polish their own public image. Several of the FSA photographers, now unemployed after the OWI cut them loose, went to work to make Standard look good. They succeeded, and the Standard Oil photographs of that period still stand as supreme examples of industrial photography. It’s too bad that Stryker died in 1975 - I’m sure BP could use his services right about now.)

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: photography

In the Friday Surprise for the 6th, there were two bonus questions. A couple of people came close, but didn't get all the details. The Leopolds referred to in the title were Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, friends who happened to be professional musicians and amateur photo chemists. Their work in color film led directly to the invention of Kodachrome. The connection with Rhapsody in Blue? The song's composer, George Gershwin, had a sister named Frances - who was married to Godowsky.

---

It seems odd to me, but I get lots of inquiries about where to buy targets. My favorite source is Law Enforcement Targets, which carries a huge line of paper and cardboard products. For defensive and "tactical" training, their stuff is the best. My other source, which carries more traditional targets (NRA, IPSC, and IDPA) is Alco Target Company. I've done business with both for years, and have never had a reason to complain.

---

I've mentioned this before, but do check out the forums over at the Personal Defense Network. There are some great discussions there, and the only thing missing is YOU!


-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: personal.defense.network, sources

Last year we learned that the last roll of Kodachrome film had been produced at Eastman Kodak. This month, the Wichita Eagle informs us that final roll has been processed.

The roll was shot by photojournalist Steve McCurry, and the images on it range from New York to India to Parsons, Kansas - where the last Kodachrome processing line is located. It, too, will be going the way of the dinosaur this December, when the equipment will be shut down for good.

Bonus points: can you decipher the meaning of my title? Extra bonus points if you can do so without a search engine; super extra bonus points if you can tell me how 'Rhapsody in Blue' is related to Kodachrome.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: photography

In 1791, the French Assembly decided that the purpose of capital punishment was to end a miscreant's life, not to cause him unbearable pain. A committee was formed for the purpose of devising a pain-free method of execution that was suitable for both upper and lower class undesirables. How egalitarian of them!

One of the committee members was a Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. While he was opposed to the death penalty, he believed that making it more humane would lead to its abolition. (The logic behind this escapes me, but apparently doctors often have this failing: one Dr. Richard J. Gatling, inventor of the gun that bears his name, believed that the creation of a terrible weapon would inspire people to no longer entertain the idea of war. Didn't work for him, either.)

The French committee eventually came up with a beheading machine, and because of the good doctor's promotion of the new "humane" method his name was associated forever with the contraption.

But just how humane is the guillotine? This article at Damn Interesting raises all kinds of questions about just what happens at the instant one's head is separated from its support mechanisms. Personally, I hope to never find out!

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: thats.odd, old.technology

Ronald Reagan was halfway through his first term as President when I took my first trip east of the Rockies. It was also my first trip via airliner, and though I'd flown quite a bit in small aircraft the view from 30,000+ feet was new to me. I was heading to Rochester, NY. Traveling from Portland to Rochester on Delta Airlines entailed a stop in Detroit, which also meant a trip over Lake Michigan.

If you've followed the story so far you'll deduce that I'd never seen any of the Great Lakes. Oh, I knew all about them; I'd studied geography in school. I knew that they were actually inland seas, that they had their own weather, that they were the largest group of freshwater bodies on earth. What I didn't know, or more correctly didn't fathom, was just how big they were.

As the plane crossed Lake Michigan I was struck by the fact that all I could see was water. I finally grasped the reality of the Great Lakes, and the stories I'd read about shipwrecks and lost souls suddenly became understandable. In that vast expanse of water, some of it nearly a thousand feet thick, it would be very easy to lose a vessel in one of the lake's infamous storms.

In 1898, that's what happened to the steamship L.R. Doty. She was carrying a load of corn destined for Ontario when a powerful storm armed with thirty-foot waves sent her to the lake floor. The 320 feet of cold, salt-free water that sat on top of her preserved her remains in almost perfect condition.

Those remains were just recently found, 112 years after her final trip. Great story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; be sure to check out the photo gallery of the wreck.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned

When I was a kid I dreamed of converting the fuel oil tank in our garage into a submarine. It was a 350 gallon flattened oval tank, no doubt familiar to millions of baby boomers whose furnaces ran on liquid fossil fuels, and I just waited for the day that I could get my hands on it.

I had big plans for my submarine: first I'd explore the depths of the pond on our 'back forty', then I'd take it down to the river and search the bottom for...I'm not sure what, but I just knew I'd find something. Little things like how I'd get air to breathe or how I'd see where I was going were mere trivialities. (After all, didn't Seaview have windows? I'd have them too!)

Naturally nothing ever came of my plans, but that didn't stop me from being fascinated with small submarines. The Japanese mini-subs of World War II were particularly interesting, and I read everything I could about them. It was known that five had attacked Pearl Harbor, but only four had ever been recovered. The fate of the fifth remained a mystery.

Perhaps not any more.

-=[ Grant ]=-

I hope everyone enjoys their three-day weekend, but do take a least a moment to reflect on why this holiday exists. Nothing maudlin, no overblown sentimentality, just a request that you think about it for at least a few moments as you fire up the grill.

-=[ Grant ]=-

I found this on Digg a few days ago, and thought it was intriguing. There is much about the Mayan civilization's technology that we still don't know, and this is opens up another set of questions.

Makes the dream of time travel all the more tantalizing.

Maya plumbing, first pressurized water feature found.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: old.technology

I usually eat my breakfast in front of the computer. I check my personal email, look in at Twitter and Facebook, read George Ure's blog, look at all the blog feeds to which I subscribe, and maybe even check what's for sale on Craigslist.

One of the Facebook updates this morning was from Rob Pincus, who is heading for Rochester (NY). That brought back memories, as in my former life I traveled to Rochester on an occasional basis, one time staying for the better part of two weeks. Astute readers will deduce that these trips had something to do with the Eastman Kodak Company (EKC, as it was known - Kodak was extremely fond of acronyms and abbreviations), and that deduction would be correct.

In the early- to mid-Eighties, which is when I visited, Kodak owned most of Rochester - and what they didn't, Xerox did. Kodak's facilities were huge even by Detroit standards, all based on sales of film and associated equipment and supplies. As digital photography eroded film's dominance, Kodak (which had been willfully dismissive of the digital threat throughout the period under discussion) saw their business decline precipitously.

Barely into the new century, Kodak was closing buildings at a rapid pace. They demolished a few, auctioned off some others, and sold what they felt they didn't need but which would still generate cash. One of the latter was a complex known as the Marketing Education Center, or - in EKC-speak - MEC.

MEC is where they held seminars, training sessions, and business meetings. Every time I went to Kodak, MEC is where I ended up. It was a gorgeous campus, looking more like a community college than a corporate office.

MEC sat next to the Genesee River, and featured a dining hall with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the river and a placid meadow. The view from the tiered seating was so perfectly New England, regardless of the season, that visitors joked the windows were actually Duratrans - Kodak's trade name for large, backlit transparencies. The food was't bad, either!

This little trip down memory lane got me to wondering: whatever happened to MEC? As it turns out, pretty much nothing. Kodak cleared out and sold it for about $3.5 million to an investment concern in 2004, and it appears to be sitting vacant today. The campus, with 120 acres and four buildings, is currently for sale at an asking price of only $9.9 million.

(In researching this, I came across the blog of a Rochester ex-pat whose family worked for EKC. She chronicles the decline of George Eastman's once-great empire.)

-=[ Grant ]=-

P.S.: Speaking of acronyms...at one point Kodak decided to do some corporate reshuffling, and the technicians who serviced their large photofinishing and photocopying equipment were inexplicably transferred to the control of the newly renamed Consumer Equipment Service. At roughly the same time, those technicians were given the title of “Field Engineers.” The in-joke was that since they were now FEs, working for CES, that their corporate acronym was to be FECES. Upper management was not at all amused.

Tags: abandoned, photography

While you may not be familiar with her work, Megan Prelinger has been busy chronicling America’s space initiatives, focusing on how they were sold to the public. She’s put together a great book: "Another Science Fiction,” which is largely a collection of advertisements for space contractors during the Cold War.

SImultaneously recruiting employees while dangling the lure of space exploration to the masses, these ads ran in such magazines as LIFE and National Geographic. I remember many of them, but Prelinger's book is the first to collect them and show how vital they were in shaping a new vision of space.

In this must-read interview at WIRED, Prelinger talks about the impact of space advertising, what could have been bigger than Apollo, and how countercultural utopias figured into the space race. Fascinating.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: nasa

My fascination with old and abandoned things often leads to dreams of great discoveries. Though I've been to a few abandoned places - all of which are pretty well known, at least locally - I'm handicapped by geography. Here in rural Oregon, there just aren't many such places.

There weren't enough people here to have produced a large urban/industrial base a century ago, our technological history doesn't go back much more than 175 years in any case, and we've never exactly been a hotbed of military activity. Thus my dreams of being the first (or, at least, one of the very few) to visit such a site remain elusive.

Other people are more fortunate. A British film crew just last year found the remains of the Aqua Traiana headwaters, the beginnings of a lost aqueduct that once supplied Rome with fresh water. It's beautiful and amazingly well preserved, and all lying below a pig pasture near the village of Manziana, just northwest of Rome.

What gets me is that they found it - in the best Indiana Jones style - by discovering a hidden door in an abandoned church.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned, dammit

The decline of Detroit fascinates me.

For many years I've wandered the Northwest visiting ghost towns and abandoned settlements, and always in the back of my mind are the unanswered questions: why did people leave? What was is like to live in a dying town? When did people finally figure out that their town was destined for the dust bin of history? Did it happen suddenly, or was it a slow, agonizing extinction?

These questions come to the forefront as I watch the continuing downfall of one of America's proudest cities.

I'm not saying that Detroit is going to disappear like, oh, Bourne (Oregon) did. It might, it might not. But it's clear that the city's contraction leaves much doubt about its future, and the glorious past of the former powerhouse remains to confront and confound the present residents.

There are lots of great galleries of decaying Detroit around the 'net (I"ve linked to one or two of them), and Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have produced some of the best.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned, photography

I really do.

Today a rogue regime can acquire nuclear force simply by writing a check. A really big check, no doubt, but child's play compared to the old days.

If you wanted an atomic bomb back then, you had to work a lot harder.

You see, we were absolutely convinced that our sole opponent in the Cold War - the Soviet Union - wanted to bomb us out of existence. We had our plans, our bombs, our missiles - and so did they.

We were always trying to find out what they were up to, and they were doing likewise. That tug-of-war gave us a time of espionage, spies and high intrigue.

Somehow, The Underwear Bomber just isn't as, well, romantic.

To illustrate my point, one of those Cold War skirmishes was fought by an Iowa-boy-turned-Soviet agent named George Koval. It's an interesting story.

-=[ Grant ]=-

The site English Russia entices me to visit the former Soviet Union - the sheer number of abandoned installations makes my head spin. Today the site beckons me with two related stories about abandoned railways in the former superpower.

First, a look at a never-operational line in northern Siberia, apparently built at Stalin's personal request. The reason for a railroad from nowhere to nowhere remains a mystery, though in all fairness we do the same thing with highways in Alaska.



The second is of a locomotive depot in the same part of the country, but these were all operational - until the USSR broke apart. At some point, everyone just walked away...



-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned

The SHOT Show, that yearly orgy of all things that go 'bang', starts next Tuesday. The products shown there will be arriving on dealer's shelves over the coming months, but the ads will show up almost immediately. That's how commerce is done.

It was serendipitous, then, that I recently ran across a site called Vintage Ad Browser. The site collects images of old ads for all kinds of products, including guns and ammo. Just like the SHOT Show, you'll find ads aimed at hunters, collectors, and those interested in self defense:



Take a look - how many do you remember from your youth?

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: vintage

Recognize this?




Yes, that's the famous Apollo 8 picture titled "EarthRise." Shot in 1968, it became an icon of America's space program. There are others, however.

Air & Space magazine has put together a superb display of NASA's most famous photos. See how many you recognize.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: nasa, photography

A lot of controversy still swirls over President Reagan's space-based initiatives, collectively referred to as "Star Wars." While a lot of Americans didn't take him seriously, some very important Soviets did.

Air & Space Magazine published this terrific article on the race to put laser weapons into orbit, focusing on the Soviet Skif-DM project. Great read about a little known (and even less understood) time in our recent past.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Once upon a time, two geeks met in college. They had some neat ideas about the world of computers, and were anxious to put their ideas into production. They started a little company.

Shortly after they incorporated, they introduced a new computer - one that was more accessible, more flexible, and under the control of a single person. They didn't make many of them, and very few exist today, but with it they changed the face of computing forever.

No, I'm not talking about Jobs & Wozniak. I'm thinking of Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson, and the company they founded - Digital Equipment Corporation. DEC, as it would come to be known, introduced what was really the earliest commercial incarnation of the personal computer: the PDP-1.



The PDP-1 certainly didn't look like what we've come to expect of the PC. Nevertheless, it started the downsizing of computing power, and introduced a concept critical to the modern PC: user interaction, as opposed to batch data processing. This shift was the necessary step to creating true personal computers, and DEC got there first.

Interactivity opened up huge new vistas for the computer. The PDP-1 has the distinction of initiating things we now take for granted: text editing, music programs, and even computer gaming. (The very first computer video game, 'Spacewar!', was written for the PDP-1. Yes, you have DEC to thank for your Wii.)

DEC only made 50 PDP-1 machines, of which only 3 are known to have survived. All of them are currently in the collection of the Computer History Museum. One is fully operational, and is demonstrated twice a month by running that historic computer game. They've got a terrific website that details the history and restoration of the PDP-1.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: computers, old.technology

Back in '51, the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Oxfordshire welcomed a new member to their staff: a computer. Today we don't even bat an eyelid when a new PC shows up in the office, but back then computers were a Big Deal. (After all, how many new staff members get their own office - the largest one in the building?)

The Harwell Computer, later to be known as "WITCH" (Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell), now occupies a unique position in computing history. It holds the distinction of being the world's oldest surviving computer with electronically-stored data and programs. All the original parts are present and it is capable, in theory, of being operated.



Though it hasn't been switched on for over 35 years, it is now being restored to operational status at the Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. They expect the restoration to be completed next summer, at which point the WITCH will be able to claim another title: oldest operational computer, beating out the Ferranti Pegasus whipper-snapper at London's Science Museum.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: old.technology, computers

The LIFE website this week unveiled a photo retrospective of Project Mercury, America's first human spaceflight program. If you look at the picture captions, you'll notice one name on most of them: Ralph Morse. There's a good reason for that.

Ralph Morse was a staffer at LIFE (and later TIME) when he was assigned to cover a press conference in Washington in 1959. That event was the announcement of the Project Mercury astronauts. Sensing the long term importance of the announcement, Morse contacted his editor and told him that there would be a lot of public interest in these men. He suggested that the magazine assign someone permanently to NASA, which was then less than a year old. Morse got the job.

It was a good choice; Morse had already been with LIFE for over a decade, bringing back some of the most well known pictures in their archives. NASA was a fledgling agency, and Morse had gotten himself in on the ground floor of what would become the Space Race.

Over the next couple of decades, Morse would become an insider at NASA. He got exclusive access, and was even allowed to place his cameras in restricted areas his competition at NEWSWEEK couldn't even dream of. Along the way, he produced some of the most iconic images of the various NASA projects.

It all started at that press conference, where an idiot reporter (some things never change) asked the astronauts which of them expected "to come back alive." Morse grabbed this shot of the astronauts showing their mettle:




Some of his shots were very well known...



...while others weren't:



All of them, though, came from the camera of an inventive genius whose enthusiasm for his job knew no bounds. Were it not for his eye, his ingenuity, and his nose for news, we wouldn't have this great visual record of our nation's greatest achievements. George Hunt, at one time LIFE's Managing Editor, said “if LIFE could afford only one photographer, it would have to be Ralph Morse.”

Ralph is now 92, but unfortunately for us gave up photography some years ago.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: nasa, photography

I decided that I'd raked enough muck for one week, and that you deserved a day off. So, it's Friday Surprise time again! (Don't worry, I'll resume the Self Defense series on Monday.)

Today we're going to see what happens when a megalomaniac decides that he needs to export the American Way Of Life into a jungle. In Brazil. Let's just say things didn't go as planned.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Well, at 110 baud, it's a slow trip!



This Teletype is identical to the one I used in high school to access a computer timeshare system. Back in the mid-'70s, practical personal computers were still a ways off, and even minicomputers (like the DEC PDP-11) were far too expensive for most high schools to purchase. The affordable way to computer power was to buy a subscription to time on a mainframe computer, and dial in on their telephone lines.

Our school was out in the boonies (no, seriously, we were) and we linked to a computer located in Portland (OR). We used the ASR-33 above to interact with the computer. The dial on the right was used to call one of the access numbers; if it was busy, we tried the next one.

As I recall, we had three numbers on which we had access, and if all three of them were busy (other users of the service), we had to wait until a line was free. For those who have grown up never having used a rotary phone, there was no such thing as speed dial or automatic redial!

We could use the paper tape reader on the left of the machine to feed in a program, or to save a program from the computer's memory. At the blazing speed of 10 characters per second, it took a LONG time to feed in a program - sometimes 30 minutes or more. We had a couple of large filing cabinets full of paper tape rolls, programs that other students had written or ones which the company supplied to us.

The computer output was printed on the typewriter in the center of the console. It used a roll of paper that was about 8" wide, and in our case was a dull yellow color.

Yes, I'm old, but your turn is coming, kids - someday your children will be laughing at the idea of your beloved iPod!

More pics of the ASR-33
Wikipedia entry on the TeleType ASR-33
What is a TeleType, anyhow?
The history of TeleType

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: old.technology

In 1874, The Netherlands had been only a few years divorced from Belgium. They had a small, weak army, no real allies, and not a lot of money. They did, however, worry about invasion from German, and so decided to fortify Amsterdam.

Remember the "not a lot of money" thing? Their poverty lead them to observe that concrete was expensive, but water was cheap. Their logical conclusion was to build a wall of water to keep invading armies out. They'd do this by purposely flooding the farmland around their own city. Seriously. They thought it was a great idea.

Of course, during World War II the Stelling van Amsterdam (Defence Line of Amsterdam) was obsoleted very quickly by mechanized armies and air power. All that's left now are a few national monuments and some parks.

Take a gander at well organized Defense Line of Amsterdam website.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: futility

I now realize that I like looking at beautiful sunrises more than beautiful sunsets. I'm sure there is some deep psychological significance to that preference, but it as yet escapes me.

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Everyone, it seems, is making a "tactical" pen these days. Benchmade, Schrade, Tuffwriter, Hinderer, Surefire - and now Smith & Wesson. Who will be next?

I have nothing against the concept, as it's simply a return to the roots of the familiar Kubotan (the techniques for which were originally intended for the common Cross-type pen.) These, though, all look like rejects from The Mall Ninja Outlet Store. I have half a mind to make one myself - classically styled out of real rust-blued steel, of course.

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One of the better (most balanced) preparedness blogs extant is Jim Rawle's SurvivalBlog.com It's one of the few blogs on my morning "must read" list, and has been since I found it several years ago. This morning he posted the sad news that his wife Linda has died after a long illness.

He's shared the progress of his beloved in the blog, and while not a shock it's still depressing to hear. My wife and I extend our heartfelt condolences to Jim and his family.

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It's necessary, if one is to maintain proper perspective, to learn from those whose experience is different from yours. Take, for example, an interview with a WWII Soviet tank crewman (thanks to Tam, who finds the most amazing stuff.) What he says about the Sherman tank, the Tommy gun, and the .45ACP cartridge are very interesting and definitely challenge certain widely held opinions.

(When you read what he says about the mighty .45, think back to the very similar stories regarding the .30 Carbine.) If you have any interest in WWII, armaments, or the nitty-gritty of battle, it's a great read.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: tacticool, bloggers

One might think that this era in history is the most well documented that has ever existed. Why, we have photography and sound recording and movies (and their digital equivalents.) Everything, it seems, has been saved for posterity. How much better preserved we are than our forebears!

Yep, you'd think so. And you'd be dead wrong.

There are huge gaps in our archival record, and oddly enough they have to do with the very things that should be most easily chronicled: our technology. Obsolete technology is disappearing, and with it a vital understanding of what we as a species have accomplished in this world. Decorative arts seem to be deemed worthy of perpetuation, no matter their relative importance, while everything else is consigned to the scrap heap.

Take just the computer - there are surprisingly few organizations who have made an effort to preserve this recent technology. With programmable computers being no more than about 60 years old, we should have a very good record of all that has passed in their development. We don't. Old computers are rare, and the earliest (physically largest) machines are virtually all gone. Of those first pioneers we have nothing but a few bad photos and the occasional fragmentary drawing.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other gaps in our historical records through which technologies, people, organizations, and companies have fallen. There are a few places attempting to preserve bits and pieces of our technological past, and one of them is the Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computation (SMECC).

SMECC maintains a fascinating site that gives a good feeling for the breadth of their collections. Particularly valuable are the first-person chronicles of the people who actually made the things in the museum's collection.

A warning: their site is perhaps the worst example of Microsoft FrontPage design. It's not nice to look at, not well laid out, and you'll have to poke around to find the gems. It feels like a throwback to the early '90s internet, which I suppose one could argue is appropriate for a museum. (With all that, it's still better than the average MySpace page.)

Any self-respecting geek could easily spend days there. Whether you're into computers, radios, or microscopes, SMECC has something for you.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Back in 1999 there was a Titan missile base for sale in California - Chico, if memory serves. If the salesman's information was to be believed, it was it great good condition, unlike most such abandoned facilities. I was fascinated by the possibilities of one of those huge complexes, but it was my brother who came up with the bright idea to buy the thing, convert it into a "Y2K Survival Community", and sell condos to rich people skittish about the coming millennium.

He figured that the three silos - each 150 deep and 55 feet in diameter - would net 45 condos of about 2,300 square feet each. Were there that many gullible millionaires who could be relieved of their money, if they could be assured that their families would survive the coming catastrophe? People in Hollywood are infamous for their susceptibility to even wilder schemes, so it seemed plausible.

Of course we never got beyond the talking stage, and as we all know nothing much happened on New Years Day 2000. It was fun to speculate and scheme, though!

That was as close as I ever got to one of those behemoth underground complexes. I've always wanted to visit one, but never have, and thus have settled for doing so vicariously.

Just as I did with this and this from www.terrastories.com

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned

I've featured a number of decay-chronicling websites, but this one is unique. onlynDetroit.com doesn't just show the deterioration of a once-proud city, it gives the why and how of urban decay. In its many pages you'll learn the stories behind the landmarks, where they came from and how they happened to get where they are today. Along with the analysis is the occasional prescription for renewal, and a happy ending or two as some eyesores get refurbished and reopened.



The photography isn't of the same standards as some urban exploration sites, spelling errors abound, and the text sometimes describes scenes for which there are no pictures - but those are minor quibbles that only help prove that the whole is greater than the sum if its parts. onlynDetroit.com is obviously the work of people who have great affection for their city despite its flaws, and the same can be said of their site. A great place to kill some free time.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned, photography

The only area in which I feel inferior to Europeans is in the history of our respective lands. I once worked with a fellow who grew up in England, who told me the house in which his family lived was the newest on the block - and it was built in the mid-18th century. Here in the U.S., we just don't have century after century of defined habitation to study. Given my love of old and abandoned buildings, it's torture learning about the great ruins the Europeans get to explore!

The latest involves the high-tech rediscovery of the ancient Italian city of Altinum. I'll have to get the latest issue of Science and read up on it!


-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned

I'm no vexillologist, nor do I play one on TV. I am, however, fascinated by historical flags. The synthesis of design, color, and history make them irresistible (to me, at least.)

Take the flags of the American Revolution, for example. Everyone knows the Gadsen flag:




Far fewer are familiar with the Fort Moultrie flag:




Only serious history buffs, however, will recognize the flag of the First Continental Regiment:




See more flags of the American Revolution.

Flags of the world (don't click unless you have lots of spare time to burn!)

-=[ Grant ]=-

An acquaintance of mine once experienced a burglary of his house. They got away with some valuable items, but I wondered just how the thieves were planning to profit from them. They couldn't pawn them, and if they tried to sell them on the street they'd be laughed to the curb. I couldn't imagine a thief stupid enough to steal this guy's stuff.

You see, this acquaintance was an electrical engineer who collected weird pseudo-medical devices. He'd found a surprising number over the years, and apparently he's not alone - there are a lot of quackery collectors who have put their finds on the net.

One of my favorite items is the The Neu-Vita Oculizer:



From www.americanartifacts.com, it is supposed to fix your eyes so that you no longer need glasses. It has two sets of eye cups; the soft rubber ones use a crank and pulley system to rotate them against your eyes, while the other side carries hard rubber eyecups. They have a concave faced plunger to poke the eye when the rubber bulbs are squeezed, and vacuum can also be applied by covering the air intake hole and releasing the bulb.

Yeah, just what I want to do to my eyes! Anyhow, that's just one of the many places on the net that you can find the history of quackery. (Sadly, most of the sites have designs that seem stuck in the mid-1990s and a surprising lack of decent images.)

One of the best is the Museum of Quackery. Tons of links. (Quackery, as you'll learn, is alive and well in the 21st century!)
Museum of Quack Electrotherapy Instruments.
American Artifacts (neat site; medical quackery is only a part of their collection, and they have items for sale.)

-=[ Grant ]=-

I've been collecting conspiracy theories for the ammo shortage, and I recently heard a great one that supposedly came from a local gun store: FEMA has been buying ammunition companies, then shutting them down to eliminate all civilian ammunition sources.

One needs an awful lot of foil for a tin hat that big...

---

Uncle and I have something in common: here in Oregon, our legislature also passed a "no texting" law. We went further, though - we added that you couldn't use a handheld cel phone at all. Then we enacted $2 billion of new taxes and spending in the state with the second-highest unemployment in the nation. We're number 49! We're number 49! Go team!

---

I'm really excited about the rifles Savage has been introducing lately. I like this concept, though I'm not at all wild about the buttstock:




I'm more intrigued by this one:



If it's as accurate as expected, I may have to own one. (Sure, I could build one myself, but I'm too busy doing guns for other people. Remember the parable about the shoemaker's children?)

Now, if we could just get them to cease doing business with H-S Precision...

---

Dr. Helen brings us the story of a woman who fought back against her knife-wielding rapist. Read the comments - some insightful, and some very amusing (in a train wreck sort of way.)

---

From the Irish Times comes news that the powers-that-be want to ban "practical" shooting (i.e. IPSC, IDPA.) The Irish Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, had this to say:

“It’s simply not in the public interest to tolerate the development of a subculture predicated on a shooting activity which by the liberal standards of the US is regarded as an extreme shooting activity." He said any cursory research on the internet showed that these activities were marketed as being at the “extreme end” of handgun ownership and were “anathema to the tradition of Irish sporting clubs”.

Hmmm...such preoccupation with America leads me to suspect his national pride is still smarting from the shellacking his team took back in 1874.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: bloggers, attacks

We learned this week that Kodak finally pulled the plug on what was their signature film, Kodachrome. Photographers will fondly recall the fine grain, superb resolution, and vibrant color of Kodak's iconic product, while everyone else will remember Paul Simon's hit song by the same name:

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Kodachrome wasn't the first time the company had influenced musical history, however. It's true that Kodachrome was invented by a couple of amateur chemists who were also professional musicians, but the influence I'm thinking of goes far deeper.

As it happens George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak, was an aspiring flutist and music fanatic. His love of making and listening to music led him to found the Eastman School of Music, cementing his place in American music history.

Now you're probably thinking "Eastman School of Music? Never heard of it!" Most people, when asked to name a prestigious music school, immediately think "Juilliard." While Juilliard is a fine school and better known to the general public, those with a deep knowledge of musical education will often quietly refer you to Eastman. Since 1921, Eastman graduates have enjoyed a solid reputation for being "musician's musicians", which persists to this day - it is often ranked as the top music school in the country in major media surveys.

George Eastman was a remarkable individual who also gave major grants to engineering and technical schools such as MIT, and involved himself in a range of social and business innovations. It could be argued, though, that giving the world both Kodachrome and Frederick Fennell would have been enough for any one person.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: photography, music

In January 1940, the Soviet Union was at war with Finland. Just a few months earlier, the Soviets had signed a non-agression pact with the German government, which besides promising to be Best Friends Forever, divided up the countries of Eastern Europe between the two powers. The two chums lost no time in invading and carving up Poland, and that success prompted Uncle Joe Stalin to go for the first country on his own shopping list: Finland.

While his generals mapped out invasion plans, Finland was issued a set of demands to adjust their borders and "lease" part of their territory to Moscow. They refused, and in late November of 1939 the Soviets attacked.

Though eventually negotiating a truce, Finland managed to inflict severe casualties on the Red forces. Nikita Khrushchev would later state that his country had lost a million soldiers, while the Finnish casualties amounted to 26,662.

Forty-six of that million were killed when their submarine, dubbed S-2, was sunk in the waters between Sweden and Finland on that cold January day.



The actual location of the wreck, and the precise cause of the sinking, remained a mystery until just a few months ago. After a decade of searching, a team of Swedish and Finnish divers located the S-2 and found out just what had happened.

Short CNN article on the find.

Absolutely terrific pictures at www.aftonbladet.se

-=[ Grant ]=-

Or, more precisely, forest.

Many people have heard of the Maginot line, a series of fortifications designed to protect France from invasion by Germany. As you may have heard, it didn't work all that well - the Germans simply went around it, through Belgium and the Netherlands, and right into Paris for coffee and gloating.

You may not have heard of the Mannerheim line. It was Finland's fortification intended to protect it from Russian aggression. During the Winter War (where the Soviets sustained losses heavy enough to make them wish they'd never set their sights on Helsinki) the Mannerheim sustained heavy damage. Unlike the Maginot line, the Mannerheim was very lightly constructed and took the full force of the Russian advance. The majority of the installations were destroyed, leaving little behind but memories.

This is one of the better-preserved pieces:



The Mannerheim Line website. (Has the most complete list of sites and current condition.)

Detailed history of the Line at winterwar.com

Quick overview of the line and its purpose.


-=[ Grant ]=-

Back in 1959, Peter Sellers made a film that, today, is sadly forgotten: "The Mouse That Roared."



The film relays the story of the tiny Duchy Of Grand Fenwick, which declares war on the United States. (There is a lesson in the clip that seems to have been lost in the intervening decades, but I'll leave that to your discovery.)

The mythical Duchy, though, has little on some of the tiniest 'countries' in the world, places whose origins and history are even more bizarre than Hollywood could concoct.

Cracked has the true stories of six of these mice.

-=[ Grant ]=-

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Office of War Information (OWI) shot tens of thousands of photographs. The vast majority - and the images we most associate with their work - were in black and white:



However, there were a number of assignments which were shot in color. That number was far smaller, likely because of budget constraints, but produced some stunning images:



This article from Photo District News shows some of the portraiture from the collection. You can view the whole collection at the Library of Congress site for FSA/OWI color images. (If you click on the Subject Index, you can browse by categories.)


-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: photography

The Friday Surprise, for anyone who's been paying attention, is often devoted to my love of the old and abandoned. (My arch nemesis, TomW, will no doubt be along soon to point out that revolvers fit into those categories. Thought I'd beat you to the punch, Tommy!)

Where was I? Oh, right...anyhow, many times I'll drive along a little-used road out on the middle of nowhere (Oregon has a lot of that) and see an abandoned homestead. They always get me to wondering: why did people walk away from that home? Why didn't someone else take it over? Was it a lack of something, or an overabundance of something else? Of course I never find the answers, but the questions come back with the next deserted abode.

With that in mind, It's not surprising that I found this article, Wrong Side Of The Tracks, more than a little interesting. It's an informed look at how neighborhoods become extinct, about how a single house may not always be the whole story, and how this kind of occurrence isn't confined to the hinterlands. A great read.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned

Or, How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Cruise Missile!

It's late in World War II. You're Adolf Hitler. Things aren't going all that swimmingly: the Russians are using your troops as landfill, the British and Americans took out your vacation home (along with everything else) in Dresden, and your girlfriend is tired of the amount of time you spend at the office.

What's a despot to do?

That's right - you bring in whatever weapon designers you have left after your latest loyalty purge, and tell them you want to be able to precisely target those dastardly Brits - down to the very building in which Churchill buys his favorite cigars.

Lo and behold, one of those designers comes up with a human-guided bomb launched from a glider (because powerful digital computers and GPS systems are still a little ways off, and conscripts are cheaper anyway.)

That could work. Or not.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Recognize this?



How about now?



Well, you're not alone. This blob of corroded bronze was discovered off the Greek isle of Antikythera in 1900. In the decades since, archaeologists have been baffled by (and no doubt argued about) just what the thing was - let alone what it did.

The Antikythera Mechanism, as it came to be known, remained an enigma until the 21st century - when advanced imaging techniques allowed researchers to see into the amorphous blob, identifying gears and inscriptions. As it turns out, the Mechanism is a mechanical computer to predict astronomical data - the solunar cycle, eclipses, and even Olympic years and the intersection of all of those.

From those images, a British gentleman - one Michael Wright - was able to build a working replica of the Mechanism. Here, for the first time in over 2,000 years, you can see what it actually did:



The Mechanism is exciting in two ways: first, and most obvious, is that is shows a level of mechanical design and workmanship that is a full millennia ahead of what we thought was possible. Scientists date the mechanism to about 100 B.C.E, and comparable clockwork mechanisms don't show up again until more than a thousand years later.

Second, it suggests that the people who constructed it had an understanding of the concepts of a heliocentric (sun-centered) universe, which would not become accepted for nearly 1,500 years after the Mechanism had been built.

What is interesting to me is the idea that knowledge - in this case, mechanical and astronomical - can be forgotten, at least in a cultural sense. In this age of abundant and ubiquitous information, it is hard to accept it as a perishable commodity. It makes one wonder: what else have we forgotten?

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: old.technology

Many years ago, I worked with a fellow who'd been raised on the east side of London. His stories about the Thames were romantic and intriguing: you could, he swore, walk along the banks of the river and pick up small items - clay pipes, etc. - that dated back four or five centuries. That wasn't surprising, he said, in a land where a 300-year-old house might be the new one on the block.

I never made it to England to find out if what he said could really be done, but there's no doubt of the history of the country. In our little land we get excited about something that is a mere century old, but in England that probably wouldn't rate a yawn.

Given that the Thames is so historically important, and that it flows through one of the most densely populated areas of the planet, its treasures should be well known. That, however, is not the case. A recent salvage expedition in the Thames Estuary - which is the area where the Thames runs into the North Sea - netted some seven forgotten shipwrecks, ranging from 1940 all the way back to 1665.

The interesting thing to me is that the operation was carried out in waters "up to" 16 meters deep - that's only about 50 feet. You'd think that some of those wrecks would have presented navigational hazards over the years, thus charted and hardly in need of discovery. It's when you combine the size of the Estuary (it's huge), the water visibility (roughly zero), and the extreme tides (up to 13 feet!), you begin to see how such things might get lost.

Check out the article in the UK Daily Mail.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Back in the 1950s, General Motors was at the top of their game. Their cars were selling well, and many consider 1957 the peak of their design and marketing prowess.

At lot of that was due to their concept or "show cars." Like today, those were vehicles built to show their prowess and to gauge consumer reaction. Some of their design details would make it to production, some wouldn't, but they were all interesting to see - even a half-century later.

Check out this slideshow from the New York Times.

-=[ Grant ]=-

That's a quote from one of my favorite photographers, Life magazine's fantastically great Ralph Morse, about his rivals at Newsweek. Ralph, it was said, was of the "old school" - a term once used to describe a code of behavior, before the "hip hop" generation co-opted it to describe MTV's previous seasons.

It's ironic that Ralph's words came on the eve of his coverage of the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981, because it was this article on Soviet cosmonaut deaths which brought them back to me. The combination caused me to think not only about the attitude of the gracious winner, but of the trials and tribulations of the losers in all high-stakes games.

While I'm proud of U.S. achievements in space (I am a child of the Sputnik Era, after all), I'm simultaneously saddened at the loss of life experienced by our (former) enemies. I'm not talking about the maudlin, paralyzing, "new age sensitive man who cries at the drop of a hat" kind of sadness, but rather a genuine empathy for those who attempt something great and leave the world poorer by their absence.

Like our astronauts, the cosmonauts were proud of their homeland. They were willing to put their lives on the line to advance not only their nationalistic pride, but something more. There was an altruistic component to their flights, which they seemed to know were advancing science and technology to benefit all those who were firmly anchored to terra firma. Even as we celebrate our own successes we need to be reminded that we are as much in their debt as they are in ours.

We see where we are today only because we stand on the shoulders of all those who came before us.

(Thanks to Tam, who found the article.)

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: photography

I suspect, in this Age of Wii, that board games are solidly out of fashion. When I was a kid that was most assuredly not the case!

Growing up on the farm, there was no such thing as cable (or satellite) television; music was on vinyl records, not iPods; and personal computers, let alone the internet, weren't even on the horizon. Board games were therefore a significant portion of our recreational activities, and we looked forward to getting together with friends and playing our favorites.

The king of games, of course, was the all-time best seller: Monopoly - "by Parker Brothers", as the TV commercials reminded us. Kids liked it, adults liked it. Everyone, it seems, enjoyed passing the time by passing "GO" - and collecting $200.

It turns out that for some people, Monopoly wasn't a pastime - it was deadly serious.

-=[ Grant ]=-

I just came up with a hot idea for a film script. We take an archeaologist who is obsessed with the Holy Grail, and we set him out on a search for it...and we'll throw in some evil Nazis who are just waiting to get it for themselves! Wouldn't that make a great movie??

Drat. Turns out that not only is my idea not my own, it's also been done already.

Day late and a dollar short...

-=[ Grant ]=-

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently turned 50. What's DARPA, you ask? Well, it is the agency that invented the network upon which you are reading this missive.

DARPA was founded to do fundamental, high-risk research into science and technology that could be used for military purposes. Today that sounds ominous and vaguely sinister, but in the 1950s it was exciting and patriotic.

One of their projects was called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), intended as a way for DARPA staffers and researchers to disseminate information and share computing resources. It introduced email, file transfers, and even voice protocols into common use, all made possible through the magic of packet switching - another DARPA innovation. This groundbreaking computer network would, with their guidance, evolve into what we now call the internet.

(Funny, isn't it - the internet upon which you can read anti-military and anti-American rants until your eyes launch themselves from their sockets is the product of an American military project. Euro-weenies will no doubt point out that the World Wide Web was the invention of an Englishman working at a Swiss lab, but his contribution - important as it is - was simply a way of easing access to information on the already vast internet. His work would not even have been necessary had it not been for DARPA.)

The computer network wasn't DARPA's only development, of course - the magnificent Saturn V rocket and the computer mouse both came from the think tanks at the agency. How's that for a wide ranging legacy?

Happy Birthday, DARPA - keep up the good work!

-=[ Grant ]=-

When I was a wee lad, America was at the forefront of space exploration. By the time I was old enough to know what was going on, we'd recovered from the shock of the Soviets beating us into space, and had responded in a big way with Gemini and Apollo programs.

In those days, our grade school classes would literally come to a halt as we gathered around a television set to watch a liftoff or a splashdown. The mighty Saturn V rockets - spewing a fireball that remains unequalled for sheer excitement - would take our astronauts into space for yet another thrilling mission. Landing men on the moon was our crowning achievement, watched by just about everyone in the country.

Space flights were national events on a scale that I haven't seen since - and probably never will again. The SuperBowl and American Idol Finals may draw larger audiences, but in terms of captivating our collective conscious, of instilling pride in our country and what we were capable of doing, they will ever equal the NASA of the mid 20th century.

NASA has put together a little retrospective of their first 50 years, using photos that have rarely been seen publicly. If you are a child of the '50s or '60s, this will bring back stirring memories of what we briefly referred to as Cape Kennedy.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: nasa

Let's take inventory: secret government projects - check. Eerie underground facilities - check. Mad-scientist-movie electrical equipment - check. Iron Curtain intrigue - check.

Yep, I have everything I need for another great entry: Russian Nuclear Research Facilities.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned

There are very few things that can start a raging debate like politics, religion - or the Civil War. Get a few people together, perhaps with some adult beverages, ask them what started the war, and wait for the fireworks.

(Personally, this Yankee reserves his invective for President Lincoln. Regardless of the actual cause of the conflict, the fact remains that he was the first President to invalidate whole sections of the Constitution to further his schemes. That modern day leftists rail against President Bush's encroachments on civil liberties, but give the far more Machiavellian Lincoln a free pass, never fails to astonish me. But I digress...)

Anyhow, the actual conduct of the war itself is fascinating. In just a few short years, we leapt from smoothbore muzzleloaders to self-contained metallic cartridge rifles. (There were times when both would serve on the same field of battle, a clash of technologies that would be roughly analogous to having Sopwith Camels and F-15s serving in the same theater of operations.)

Espionage, sabotage, psychological warfare, and manipulation of public opinion as tools of war saw similar advancements. Not all of the operations would work out too well, though, and the story of Captain Thomas Henry Hines is a great example.

-=[ Grant ]=-

As a child of the West, I'm generally not one to get excited about the upper-right quadrant of our country. I've visited the northeast, and in general am not all that attracted to the region. However, one thing the inhabitants of the region have that I'm quite jealous of are layers of old infrastructure, just waiting to be explored.

In the distant past my job occasionally required me to travel to upstate New York. Even the things that residents of the area consider commonplace - say, the remnants of the Erie Canal - just fascinated me, because of the long and storied past of that engineering marvel. Thus I spent a large portion of my "off" time visiting local museums and historical attractions.

On one visit to the Rochester area, I took the time to follow the Canal's path from there to Tonawanda. Since I was in the "neighborhood" - literally just a few miles - I made the short hop up to see the fabled Niagara Falls. (It must be said that even I, somewhat jaded by close encounters with much higher waterfalls, was amazed at Niagara Falls. It's worth the trip.)

At the time I wasn't aware of the history of power generation at Niagara, let alone the extent of the abandoned facilities that were literally right under my feet. I am now, and boy would I like to go back and see some of it!


Courtesy of www.vanishingpoint.ca

Check them out at vanishingpoint.ca, which is a great site for urban explorers.

-=[ Grant ]=-

One of my favorite abandoned/unknonwn/old technology subjects is the fabled Beach Pneumatic Transit System in Manhattan. Nothing exists of it today - neither facilities nor artifacts - but this article at Damn Interesting gives the best overview I've seen of the ill-fated project.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned

As you may have guessed from previous entries, history fascinates me. Not in the sense of ancient history, or even battle locations and dates; the history I'm interested in is the history of technology. I'm interested in the history that was displayed in what used to be known as "science and industry" museums, before those institutions got caught up in showcasing meaningless "interactive" exhibits carefully crafted so as not to "offend" anyone (while managing to avoid any real education in the process.)

Anyhow, part of the history of technology is how products were represented to the buying public. The product logo, aside from showing the pride of the people who made it, served as a point of reference (and sometimes of reverence) for those who might decide to own the thing.

Vehicle logos are perhaps the perfect example of how logo design changes not only with fashion trends, but with regard to customer's expectations and aspirations. Check out this collection of auto logo evolution, courtesy of Neatorama.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: design

Students of espionage and surveillance (which every security-conscious person should be) understand how intelligence is actually gathered, and it isn't the way it happens in Hollywood.

Those who watch too much TV think that security breaches come fully formed - that damaging information is gleaned nearly whole, needing only a few minor details filled in to make it valuable. While that may occasionally be true for satellite imaging, when putting together information gathered "on the ground" it is more like doing a jigsaw puzzle.

In reality, it is the small bits of information, gleaned from many sources, that form the picture one's opponent seeks. Even seemingly innocuous minutiae, in the hands of a skilled intelligence analyst, can help to flesh out a growing body of actionable information. Such little things - usually gathered informally and from the unwitting - are amazing valuable to the right person.

Back in World War II, the military needed to impress this concept on the U.S. population. "Mass media" back then meant radio, newspapers, and - most graphically - posters. Lots and lots of posters. Eye catching, colorful posters - works of art in their own right.

Check out some of the urgent messages they conveyed.

Here's a bunch more.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tam is excited that it's John Browning's birthday.

Personally, I find it difficult to get excited about a guy who never made a revolver....

-=[ Grant ]=-

For those that actually remember the dawn of the computer age (my first computer experience was on a time-shared GE 600-series mainframe), looking over old computer advertisements brings a flood of reactions: amusement, embarrassment, and the occasional "I wish I'd bought their stock when it was first offered." (Of course, there is also the "I'm glad I didn't buy any of their stock!")

Take a look at these vintage ads. I particularly like the one explaining what email is - not just for the content, but for the company promoting the concept. (Honeywell, once a player in mainframe computers, is perhaps best known these days for making thermostats - which is what they made before they bought their way into the computer business.)

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: old.technology

If you've been reading this screed for any length of time, you know my fascination with old and abandoned places. WebUrbanist, a site that deals with various cultural scenes and artifacts from all over the world, has sometimes fed this addiction of mine.

This time, they have a collection of great abandoned sites right here in the good ol' US of A.

Now, just to prove to you that I'm not "all hat and no cattle", here's a shot of an abandoned mine I ran across in southern Oregon:



Yes, it's full of water. You're looking at the roof supports, which are about six feet above the floor. No kidding.

(There was an old sign on the entrance that read "extreme danger - do not enter." Ya think??)

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned

At least, some of them did!

Here's a great little collection of pictures from the last few decades of computer technology. Ranging from mainframes to the first microcomputers, it's a neat glimpse of just how far things have come.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: old.technology

Just a few tidbits today, then back to work:

- I got an email from a fellow who referred to me as having an "influential position" in the industry. Huh?? Since when? Does he know something I don't? Apparently I didn't get that memo...and neither did anyone at Ruger, Dan Wesson, or Colt. (I notice that I have yet to be invited to any industry junkets - I hear about them from AFGWWWTRA. It's probably because I don't have a big enough audience here at the Revolver Liberation Alliance. Guess I'll have to get a regular column in one of the magazines, then I'll get invited to all the "right" parties!)

- Thanks to all who expressed sympathy for my tendonitis. It's healing, slowly, but improvement has been noticed. I managed to get in a fairly normal work schedule last week, though I still can't lift anything that is moderately heavy and requires a strong grip - say, a quart of milk out of a grocery sack on the floor. I hate this whole aging process; I honestly thought that I could somehow avoid it. Silly me.

- Someone emailed a query regarding a rumor he'd heard: that Colt had sold the rights and plans for the Python to Wilson Combat, who were to begin producing them "soon." I don't know where to start with this one, but suffice it to say that it is far more suited for April 1st than November 1st. (Should you ever be involved in a game of "gunsmith trivia", both Bill Wilson and I started out in life as watchmakers. True story.)

- Finally, Tam recently posted another in her "Sunday Smith" series: the Model 15. I just wish she'd show equal love to the Colts in her collection. (Uhh, Tam, you DO have non-reciprocating Colts in your safe, don't you? Tam? Hello??)

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: afgwwwtra, bloggers

But not the one you may have thought!

You may recall that back during World War II, we developed the first operational nuclear bomb. It was a massive effort, with the epicenter in Alamogordo, New Mexico. So, why was it called the "Manhattan Project"?

Many believe that it was a name picked to draw attention away from the desert southwest, to confuse the enemy by calling it by something completely unrelated to the project. A little security sleight-of-hand, as it were.

You might be surprised just how close to the mark the name actually was.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Well, definitely not in these!

Owing to my unnatural fascination with old and abandoned things, I find the concept of an aircraft boneyard to be absolutely irresistible. The most famous of them is no doubt the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center outside of Tucson, but there are others.

The Russians have such things, too, and they can be a fascinating glimpse into the "other side" of the Cold War.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: abandoned

It's confession time: I'm a geek. A card carrying, spent-all-my-high-school-time-in-the-library, know-how-to-use-a-sliderule geek. I love computers, think physics should be taught in kindergarden, and generally find technology of all kinds (modern to ancient) fascinating.

Seems I'm not the only gun blogger to claim that moniker: the infamous Tam purports to be a geek, too - but is she? Is she really? Oh, yeah, she makes a big deal about her old computers - but did she ever have a DEC PDP-11/70 (running RSTS, no less) in her garage like I once did? I think not!

I, on the other hand, can prove my exalted status beyond a shadow of doubt, as I possess the ultimate geek credential: an amateur radio license. No, not your simple no-code-Tech paper, but a real I-passed-the-Morse-code-test-and-have-HF-privileges-to-show-for-it General class ticket. In the world of the terminally socially inept, the ham radio license is Da Bomb. Let's see you beat THAT, Tam! Hah! Hah-hah-hah!

(I think I've been reading far too much Mogambo Guru. But I digress...)

This nerd calling-out is just a pathetically unimaginative way of introducing today's topic: an abandoned Ionospheric Research Station hidden deep in the Ukrainian wilderness. You see, such installations are all about antennas, and any ham radio operator worthy of the title is really into antennas. I sure am; I have books about antennas, have pictures of antenna installations, and generally love looking at anything to do with antennas - the more esoteric, the better!

They don't come much grander than this one, courtesy - once again - of that web site for all geeks, Dark Roasted Blend. (If after viewing the site you have an irresistible urge to buy a pocket protector, I cannot be held responsible!)

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: old.technology

The "buddy movie" has become a staple in Hollywood's bag of banal plot staples. They've given us cop buddy movies, firefighter buddy movies, private eye buddy movies, superhero buddy movies, and even suicidal women buddy movies.

In the hands of a master, though, even a cliche becomes fresh and intriguing. The master, in this case, is Akira Kurosawa, and the movie in question is the superb "Dersu Uzala."

Dersu is a Nanai hunter who befriends - and is befriended by - Captain Arsenyev, who is leading a surveying expedition in Siberia just after the turn of the 20th century. Dersu is the quintessential mountain man who is completely at home in nature, while Arsenyev (and his crew of soldiers) are distinctly out of place in the vast wilderness. Dersu becomes Arsenyev's friend, showing him not just how to survive in the unforgiving landscape but also a bit about the meaning of life.

Watch this clip, and note how Dersu not only sees subtle clues around him, but how he cares for those who he may never meet:



Their friendship grows out of mutual respect, not bravado; what they share is a heartfelt concern for the land and the people who inhabit it, as well as the welfare of each other.

The movie is based on the autobiographical novel of the same name, written by the real Captain Arsenyev about the real Dersu. Kurosawa had read the book and desperately wanted to bring it to the big screen, and in the 1970s finally got his chance - spending two full years filming in the wilds of Siberia. The result may, as some critics have suggested, be Kurosawa's most beautiful (and certainly most underrated) work.

Because it is a true tale, this movie teaches us more about the nature of friendship than anyone in Hollywood can fathom. There are no plot twists and no happy ending; like life, it proceeds at its own pace up to the poignant conclusion (which itself brings up back to the start of the film, reminding us of the cycle of life.)

I saw this film many years ago, and I remembered it as being a great story. Understand that I'm not a film buff - frankly, I find it hard to sit through a whole movie - and certainly not a big Kurosawa fan. That it is one of only a handful of films I actually want to own tells you that it is something truly special.

Thanks to the generosity of a close friend I now have my own copy, which I will treasure. The film is hard to find, but it is worth the search. If Nessmuk means anything to you, Dersu Uzala will be one of your favorites too.

-=[ Grant ]=-

I'm sure that by now you're quite tired of hearing about my interest in abandoned, secret, and underground places. I love exploring such things, and rarely turn down the chance to visit an old mine or poke around in the ruins of Fort Stevens, right here in Oregon. The older, danker, and creepier they are the more i like them. I can't explain this fascination, not even to myself!

I've been thinking that perhaps I've touched on this subject a bit much, and thought that it was only fair to give some balance - a counterpoint, as it were - to this keen interest of mine. Just so you know that there are some places I definitely don't want to explore, I give you abandoned bio-chem warfare facilities.

Yikes!

-=[ Grant ]=-

I've previously mentioned that I have a fascination with abandoned places, and even more for abandoned/mothballed spaces that are underground.

Well, the folks over at Dark Roasted Blend have some amazing pictures of old underground facilities around the world. You won't believe the Tokyo Storm Water System! (OK, it's not really abandoned, but it's still awfully cool.)



(As you might have guessed, I'm a fan of the History Channel's show Cities of the Underworld. Check it out!)

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tam profiled another revolver at The Arms Room this weekend. Her Smith & Wesson .44 Hand Ejector 2nd Model was made in 1920, and has period mother-of-pearl grips. She calls it a "tired" piece - and it is - but I like honest wear on an old gun. Great historical information in the article, as always.

---

I've played around a bit with the Steyr "M" series and their "trapezoidal" sights, and have yet to form a strong opinion one way or the other. (My wife loves them, and Massad Ayoob thinks they're neat, so apparently they have some utility - despite being relegated to the top of a self-shucking firearm. Blech.)

Apparently the Steyr effort wasn't lost on the folks at SureSight, who've developed a sight that is obviously inspired by Steyr's (though by no means a copy.) Interesting - too bad they don't make them to fit revolvers, as I'd like to try them out. (Just because I shoot a revolver, and have something of a reputation as a Luddite where firearm sights are concerned, doesn't mean that I'm totally opposed to something that will help me shoot better. They simply have to show me some marked advantage over what I have now!)

---

Speaking of sights, the Israeli company NorthEast Technologies (NET) has developed what they are not-so-modestly referring to as a "revolutionary" handgun sight. Basically, it's a long fiber optic that mounts to the rear of the slide, replacing the front and rear sights. (It reminds me of the late and hardly lamented ASP Guttersnipe that was mounted on their namesake modified S&W 39 autpistol.) Simply place the glowing red dot on the target, and pull the trigger - at least, that's how NET says it works. Hmmm...where have I heard that one before?

Still, if it works well and has no major disadvantages, it may prove to be useful for some folks. Like the SureSight, I'll believe it when I see it. (Maybe I was actually born in the "Show Me" state?)

-=[ Grant ]=-

So you're on your way home from a hard day's work in Cameroon. You pass through a small village, where everyone is dead. No external evidence of foul play, and it appears that they died very quickly - in the midst of their daily activities.

The deaths aren't limited to people. Animals for miles around died in their tracks, and just like the humans show no signs of foul play. The toll would eventually be 1,800 people and double that number of animals, all killed at the same time.

Investigators were baffled. Eventually, though, they did find the answer - and it was one worthy of a television show. It turns out that the mysterious killer had more in common with a bottle of soda than with a psychopath.

Find out what the mysterious killer was.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Back when I was a teenager, I apprenticed to a master watch- and clock-maker. He was an older fellow - in his early 70s - and had been in the business for a very long time.

I enjoyed looking around his shop in spare moments, as he had many old and wonderful gadgets on his jam-packed shelves. One one high shelf, way in the back, was a little vial of off-white liquid. I asked him what it was, and he said "radium paint. We used to use it to make the numbers on dials visible in the dark. Don't touch it!"

He never did explain to me why I shouldn't touch it, but I obeyed his command and forgot all about it. That is, until I ran across this article on US Radium, the company that made the paint in that little bottle.

-=[ Grant ]=-

This week is just absolutely stuffed. Since I don't have the time to write anything profound, I'll just link to an article about this:



Hell In A Handbasket has the full story on this unusual revolver.

(Oh, and Tam has yet another revolver on her blog. I don't know what's gotten into her lately, but I hope she keeps with it!)

-=[ Grant ]=-

During World War II, Oregon had the singular distinction of being attacked by the Empire of Japan not once, not twice - but on three separate occasions. It would seem that the war planners in Tokyo had it out for us!

In early 1942, Fort Stevens - which stood guard at the mouth of the Columbia River - was shelled by the Japanese submarine I-25. Just a few months later that same submarine, this time fitted with an underwater aircraft hangar, launched a small airplane and bombed our southern coast. Finally, in 1944, the Japanese military launched a series of balloon bombs against North America, most of which landed in the forests of Oregon. One of those balloons landed in south-central Oregon, and killed 6 people - the only war casualties to occur in the mainland United States.

So, why Oregon? Basically, because we were the most convenient yet lightly defended target available to them. There is a lesson in that...

-=[ Grant ]=-

In 1988, at a facility near Henderson, Nevada, something really bad - and really loud - happened.

Pacific Engineering Production Company, aka PEPCON, was a producer of ammonium perchlorate - a very powerful oxidizer for rocket fuel. Ammonium perchlorate, as it happens, is very unstable and doesn't like fire one little bit.

Coincidentally, there was a repair crew on a television transmitter tower nearby, and not only did they witness the whole inferno they also captured an incredible video sequence of the main explosions. You just have to see it - watch for the shock wave as it travels across the ground!



You can read about the whole disaster at Damn Interesting.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Gukanjima ("Battleship"), also known as Hashima ("Border") Island sits a mere 15 kilometers from Nagasaki. It is one of 505 uninhabited islands of the Nagasaki Prefecture - but it was not always that way.

In 1890, Japan's industrialization was just gaining steam, and they needed coal to make that steam. Mitsubishi (yes, that Mitsubishi) bought the island that year, with the intention of mining the coal reserves that stretched beneath it. Mitsubishi built a city on the tiny island (only 15 acres) that eventually housed an incredible 5300 people - giving it, for a time, the highest population density on earth.

By the 1960s, coal had fallen out of favor around the world, and Japan was no exception. They began shrinking operations at the mines, and in 1974 closed the mines - and the island - completely.

Today the empty city stands, its once-bustling buildings being reclaimed by the force of wind and rain. Travel to the island is prohibited, but some intrepid photographers have made the trip to capture haunting images like these.

Wikipedia entry for Hashima Island
Archibase photo esssay - superb B&W pictures of the remains
History of Hashima Island

-=[ Grant ]=-

You know, I had a pretty darned good childhood. I grew up on a small farm, outside a small town (I remember when the town passed the 1500 resident milestone) that was nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Range.

After chores were finished and if there were no other pressing jobs to be done (like hauling hay), I got to do what I wanted. I could go down to our pond and fish, or take off with my friends Dan and/or Tom for an overnight camping trip - all with very little administrative (parental) hand-wringing. Even a two-day trip up the river and into the woods wasn't out of the question, though such an outing did prompt some worrying from my mother.

Not a bad way to grow up!

Living as I do in suburbia, I long for the time when we would run into the forest with little more than a small tent, a blanket, a sheath knife, maybe a couple cans of baked beans, and a fishing pole. (If we planned our trip into a particular area that we knew contained several small caves, we didn't even bother with the tent.) Woodcraft, such as shelter building and fire making, was an expected part of any well-balanced upbringing. I miss those days.

I have found a way to keep the hunger for simpler times at bay: I curl up with Nessmuk.

What is a Nessmuk? Properly, the question is phrased "Who is Nessmuk?"



Nessmuk was in normal existence one George Washington Sears. Sears was a slight, asthmatic individual who was born in 1821 in Massachusetts, and spent much of his life - at least, that portion when he wasn't working just to finance his next adventure - in a canoe or on a boat or in the woods.

He was able to combine his love of the outdoors and his considerable talent as a writer by having narratives of his adventures published in Forest and Stream magazine.

He wrote two books, Woodcraft and Camping, which are still in print - combined into one volume titled Woodcraft and Camping (no surprise there, right?!?) It is still available to this day, which must be some sort of record in the publishing business. (Another book, called Adirondack Letters, is a compilation of his articles in Forest and Stream.)

Woodcraft and Camping is not a thick book, nor is it solely a "how to" manual. It is the collected wisdom and insights of a man who lived just to be able to commune with nature. Nessmuk wrote in a beautiful, lyrical style that makes the reader salivate with the desire to get out into the wilderness.

At only $6.95, I believe it to be one of the greatest bargains - as well as one of the "must haves" - in outdoor literature. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone who enjoys living in and exploring the wilderness, or even just dreaming about it!

Woodcraft and Camping at Amazon.com
A short biography of George Washington Sears
The Adirondack Letters online edition (free!)
Wikipedia entry on Nessmuk

-=[ Grant ]=-

Today's cel phone technologies rely on something called "spread spectrum," which is a fancy way of saying "frequency hopping." In spread spectrum, a data stream - in this case a voice - is transmitted using radio waves whose carrier rapidly switches between many frequencies, using a prearranged sequence known to both transmitter and receiver.

The reason the spread spectrum is so important - aside from being resistant to interference and very difficult to intercept - is because it makes more efficient use of scarce bandwidth. Spread spectrum makes it possible to carry more information - more conversations - amongst a limited number of frequencies.

But this use is very recent. Prior to the invention of the cel phone, frequency hopping was used to make military radio transmissions more secure. Using frequency hopping makes it far more difficult for an enemy to intercept your signal, and to use direction finders to pinpoint your location. Of course, it isn't just for voice! Frequency hopping makes it possible to have radio-control munitions, such as bombs and torpedoes, that your enemy can't jam into uselessness.

Now as useful as this is, one would think that the concept originated deep in some Pentagon think tank - but you'd be wrong! The idea came from the fertile mind of a beautiful woman, the actress Hedy Lamarr.



I'll let you read the articles below to find out about her valuable contribution to the world of communications technology!

Female Inventors: Hedy Lamarr

HEDY LAMARR: The Inventor of Frequency Hopping

Did You Know...about Hedy Lamarr?

Hedy Lamarr - from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


-=[ Grant ]=-

Aside from my preoccupation with personal flying machines, I'm also fascinated by abandoned buildings, old mines, and - even though I can't swim - shipwrecks!

The schooner Milan operated on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, shuttling grain and other staples with its crew of nine men. In October of 1849, it was heading to Cleveland with a load of salt when it started taking on water. Despite the efforts of the crew, the Milan sank into the cold depths of Lake Ontario, coming to rest in over 200 feet of water.

The wreck was located in 2005, and a surprise awaited its discoverers: it sits upright, completely intact, on the bottom of the lake - even its masts are in place, sticking straight up from the deck as they did when on the surface! It is a superbly preserved example of early American sailing technology, and is an important historical find (in addition to just being really cool!)



You can read about the wreck in this article on Shiwreckworld.com, and get some more background material in this article on the ABC News website.

-=[ Grant ]=-

• This thread at GlockTalk seemed oddly familiar to me. People routinely ask about the lifespan of a particular gun, while at the same time suggesting that somehow the guns of yesteryear would last longer under use than today's offerings. I'm not sure that this is the case.

Let's jump back to, say, 1935 or so. Someone has just bought a new .38 Special revolver (take your pick of quality makers) and a box of ammunition - a box that might last them for a decade or more!

What I've managed to decipher from the "old folks" I've talked with is that they just didn't shoot guns all that much. There weren't a lot of competitive shooting events back then, and even those that existed demanded less ammunition in a year than a typical IDPA match consumes in a weekend. A box of handgun ammo (50 rounds) per year was considered a "lot" of shooting by many of these folks; at that rate, our mythical revolver would be considered to have been heavily used, having only seen a total of 3500 rounds!

Flash forward to 2006, and a certain maker says that their gun has an "expected lifespan" of 6,000 rounds. Doesn't sound like much to us, but it may be two or three (or possibly ten) times the number of rounds that guns sold in 1935 would expect to see over their lifetime.

Perspective, people. There is a lot to complain about in the craftsmanship (or lack of same) coming out most of today's manufacturers, but one generally can't fault the durability of the guns. There are exceptions, of course, but in the aggregate I suspect that your average GP-100 will last longer than the folks of 1935 could even imagine.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Since this is Friday the 13th, I thought I'd share with you some link that are a little on the "eery" side.

The first deals with the Battle of Los Angeles: did we fight extra-terrestrials in 1942?

Second, check out the Glore Psychiatric Museum: a weird exhibition of madness and how we deal with it.

Finally, take a listen to one of my very favorite podcasts: HomeTown Tales - "because every town has one."

Enjoy!

-=[ Grant ]=-

Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii made quite a number of photographs prior to the communist revolution of 1918. What makes them unusual is that they are in vibrant color!



Prokudin-Gorskii invented the technique to do this. What he did was to shoot 3 nearly identical black-and-white negatives in rapid succession - through narrow-band red, green and blue filters - then show them on a screen through those same red, green, and blue filters to produce color images. With today's digital techniques, it is possible to assemble these images and view them easily.

During my photographic career, I experimented with his technique with marginal success, but of course modern color films and papers made this cumbersome process superfluous. At the time I was playing with this, I did not know that Prokudin-Gorskii had invented it. It was, after all, the tail end of the Cold War, and very little was publicized about Russian technology. It wouldn't be until the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the disintegration of the Iron Curtain, that such things became known.

Today, the Library of Congress has one of the largest, and the only digitally reproduced, portfolio of Prokudin-Gorskii's groundbreaking work. Absolutely fascinating to view, and a "must see" for history and technology buffs!

-=[ Grant ]=-

When we think of images of World War I, we think "black & white." But color photography, though in its infancy and quite expensive, did exist - and was used to capture images of the event and environs.

This site has a number of pictures taken by the French during the last two years of "The Great War." Wonderful slices of history, and rarely seen.

One of my favorites:



This picture show Swiss soldiers standing guard at the border with France. Switzerland, as you know, was neutral during the war; images of their soldiers during that time period are a bit hard to find. To find one in color is a rare treat. (If you look carefully, you can tell that the picture was taken through the chicken wire that served to delineate the borderline.)

I must say that it's a bit unnerving to look through these images, and not because of gore or mayhem (there isn't any.) Black-and-white pictures are an abstraction, which is why photographers like to dabble in the medium. Color, on the other hand, is "real" - it is a record, where black-and-white is an interpretation. These pictures draw you in, and make the situations being captured on film a bit less theoretical. They are almost haunting...

-=[ Grant ]=-

Saturday, June 3, Montenegro declared independence from Serbia. Montenegro, along with Serbia, had been a part of Yugoslavia since they joined the Balkan union in 1918.

Just what does this have to do with revolvers? Well, there is a revolver commonly known as a "Montenegrin revolver", and often said to have been designed or made in Montenegro.

The trouble is that there isn't a shred of truth to those tales!

The Montenegrin is more properly termed a Gasser, having originated in the Austrian arms factories of Leopold Gasser. Gasser had factories in Vienna and St. Polten. His guns were widely available in the Balkans, and were in fact adopted by the Austro/Hungarian army.

Why, then, did these 11mm revolvers get attributed to Montenegro? There are two explanations: first, that their 11mm Long chambering was originally issued to the Montenegrin army for a single shot carbine. The second, more romantic and interesting, is that King Nicholas of Montenegro had made the ownership of such arms mandatory for his male citizenry. It was also said that the King had a financial stake in their sale!

As interesting as the tale is, though, there seems to be no hard evidence to support the King's supposed order. The name continues to live on, even if we never know absolutely where it originated.

Today, original Gasser revolvers fetch a pretty penny on the open market. If looking at one, make sure it is marked from the Gasser factory - there were any number of knock-offs made in workshops in Austria and Belgium. Such arms are sometimes of questionable manufacture and value, though are often labeled with the misleading moniker of "Montenegrin revolver" by their over-enthusiastic (if ill-informed) sellers.

Happy Independence Day, Montenegro!

-=[ Grant ]=-